Pen 33

Book 0: DCI Ewert Grens

by Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström, Elizabeth Clark Wessel

Genres: Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Description: Bernt Lund harbors a sickness. He is a monster, an unrepentant child molester and serial killer. In the mind of society, in the minds of his nine-year-old victims' parents, and in the minds of his fellow inmates, he is a waking nightmare. And now he has escaped from custody--the worst scenario imaginable for Aspsås Prison's Department for Sexual Crimes.

Detective Superintendent Ewert Grens is about to encounter the most profoundly appalling case in his career, and perhaps in Stockholm's history. During the course of one long, hot summer, Sweden will face an explosive series of events that spread across the country like wildfire, events that call into question the very nature of humanity, duty, forgiveness, and self-defense. And justice.

Pen 33 is an unflinching exploration of what people–both criminals and victims–are capable of when they relinquish self-control.

Release date: June 16, 2016

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 336

Sample

 

HE SHOULDN’T HAVE.

They’re coming from over there. They’re coming now. Over the hill, past the jungle gym.

Twenty metres away, maybe thirty. Near the red flowers, like the ones outside Säter Psychiatric Institution, which he used to believe were roses.

He shouldn’t have.

It wasn’t going to feel the same now, because he had. Lesser, somehow. Almost numbed.

There are two of them. They’re walking side by side, talking – friends. Friends talk to each other in a certain way, with their hands. The dark-haired one seems to be doing most of the talking. She’s eager, wants to say everything, all at once. The blonde one mostly listens. As if she’s tired. Or as if she’s the type who doesn’t speak, who doesn’t need to take up space all the time to show she’s alive. Maybe that’s the way it is: one dominates and one is dominated. Isn’t that how it always is?

He shouldn’t have jerked off.

But that was this morning. Twelve hours ago. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe it didn’t make much of a difference.

He knew this morning, as soon as he woke up. Tonight was going to be a good night for it. Today is a Thursday, just like last time. The day is sunny and clear, just like last time.

They’re wearing similar jackets. Thin, white, some kind of nylon with a hood on the back, he’d seen quite a few of them since Monday. Two small backpacks slung over their shoulders. All those backpacks, everything in a pile in one large compartment, he can’t understand it, will never understand it. They are close, closer, he hears their conversation, their laughter again, they’re laughing at the same time, the blonde one more carefully, not afraid, just taking up less space.

His choice of outfit was deliberate. Jeans, T-shirt, a cap on backwards, just like he’d been seeing in the park since Monday; they wear them that way nowadays, backwards.

‘Hi there.’

They jump, stop. Then silence. The kind of silence that happens when an ambient sound suddenly stops, forcing the ear to listen. Maybe he should have adopted a southern accent? He’s good at that, and some pay more attention, because it sounds important somehow. He’s been collecting voices for three days. No southern accent. No northern accent either. This is a city that speaks what might be called proper Swedish. No diphthongs, and not much slang. Boring, actually. He fingers his cap, rotates it one turn, pressing it a little harder against his neck, still backwards.

‘Hi, girls. What are you doing out so late?’

They look at him, at each other. They attempt to leave. He tries to appear relaxed, leaning slightly against the backrest of the bench. Which animal? Squirrel? Rabbit? A car? Candy? He shouldn’t have masturbated. He should have prepared better.

‘We’re on our way home. We’re allowed to be out this late.’

*

She knows that she’s not supposed to talk to him.

She’s not supposed to talk to adults she doesn’t know. She knows that.

But he’s not an adult. Not really. He doesn’t look like an adult. Not really. He’s wearing a cap. And he’s not sitting like an adult. Adults don’t sit like that.

Her name is Irena Stanczyk. A Polish surname. She’s from Poland. Or, not her, but her mum and dad. She’s from Mariefred.

She has two sisters. Diana and Izabella. Older, almost married, they don’t live at home any more. She misses them; it was nice to have two sisters at home, but now she’s alone with Mum and Dad, and they’re more worried now, always asking where she’s going, who she’s meeting, what time she’s coming home.

They need to stop that. She’s nine years old now.

*

It’s the dark one who does all the talking. The one with long hair held back by a pink hairband. Almost as if she’s talking back. Foreigner. With an attitude. She looks down on the chubby blonde one. It’s the dark one that decides – he sees that, feels it.

‘Girls as little as you? I don’t believe it. What could you be up to at this time of day?’

He likes the chubby blonde one best. She has cautious eyes. He’s seen those kinds of eyes before. Now she dares, she glances at the other one first, then at him.

‘We were practising, actually.’

*

It’s still just Maria talking. She always says what they think.

Now it’s her turn. She’s also going to speak.

He doesn’t seem dangerous. Not angry. He’s wearing a nice cap, just like Marwin, her big brother. Her name is Ida and she knows why. Her brother Marwin picked it. He read it in a book by Astrid Lindgren. So ugly. That’s what she thinks. Sandra is prettier. Or Isidora. But Ida. That’s the name of the girl Emile hoisted up a flagpole.

She’s hungry. It has been a long time since she’s eaten. School lunch today had been disgusting, some kind of meat casserole. She’s always hungry after she trains.

They usually rush home to eat, but now Maria is just talking and talking, and the man in the cap keeps asking.

*

No animal. No car. No candy. He doesn’t need that. They’re talking to him. He knows it’s settled now. If they talk to him, it’s settled. He looks at the blonde chubby one. She dared to speak. He didn’t think she would. The one who is naked.

He smiles. He always does that. They like that. You put your trust in people who smile. You smile when someone smiles at you. Just the chubby blonde one. Just her.

‘So you were training? Doing what, if you don’t mind my asking?’

The chubby blonde one smiles. He knew it. She looks at him. She looks just above him. He knows. He grabs his cap, turns it half a turn until the peak appears. He bows, takes it off, lifting it up, holding it in the air above her head.

‘Do you like it?’

She raises her eyebrows, glancing up without moving her head, as if she might bump it against an invisible ceiling. She hunches up, making herself smaller.

‘Yeah. It’s nice. Marwin has one like that.’

Just her.

‘Marwin?’

‘My big brother. He’s twelve.’

He lowers the cap. The invisible ceiling, he passes through it. He swiftly strokes her fair hair. It’s shiny and quite soft. He puts his cap on her head. On its shiny softness. The red and green suits her.

‘You look nice. It suits you.’

She doesn’t say anything. The dark one is about to say something, so he continues hurriedly.

‘It’s yours.’

‘Mine?’

‘Yeah, if you want it. You look beautiful in it.’

She looks away. She takes the dark one by the hand. She wants to pull them away, away from the park bench, away from the man who has just given her a red and green cap.

‘You don’t want it?’

She stops, lets go of the dark one’s hand.

‘Yeah.’

‘Well then.’

‘Thank you.’

She curtsies. It’s so rare these days. Girls used to do that. Not any more. Now everyone is supposed to be equal, no curtsying, no bowing either.

The dark-haired one has been silent longer than usual, now she firmly grabs hold of the blonde one’s chubby little hand. She almost jerks it, both stumble.

‘Come on. Let’s go now. It’s just a fucking cap guy.’

The blonde chubby one looks at the dark-haired one, then at him, then defiantly back at the dark-haired one again.

‘Soon.’

The dark one raises her voice.

‘No. Now.’

She turns towards him. Runs her hand through her long hair.

‘And besides. It’s ugly. Probably the ugliest one I’ve ever seen.’

She points to the red and green cap. Presses her finger hard against it.

An animal. Soon. A cat. A dead cat maybe. They are nine or maybe ten years old. A cat is fine.

‘You never said what you did at the gym.’

The dark one holds her hands at her waist. Like an old lady, a shrill old lady. Like the old lady at Säter Institution, the first time. The kind who wants to raise you and change you. He can’t be changed. He doesn’t want to be changed. He is who he is.

‘Gymnastics. We’ve been practising gymnastics. We do it all the time. Now we’re leaving.’

They walk away, the dark-haired one first, the blonde one second, not as quickly, not as determined. He looks at their backs, their naked backs, bare buttocks, bare feet. He runs after them, past them, stands in front, stretching out his hands.

‘What are you up to, fucking cap guy?’

‘Where?’

‘What do you mean, where?’

‘Where do you train?’

Two elderly ladies are walking up the hill. They are almost at the flowers that aren’t roses. He looks at them. He looks down, counts to ten hastily, looks up again. They’re still there, but about to turn, take another path, towards the fountain.

‘What are you up to, fucking cap guy? Are you having a stroke?’

‘Where do you work out?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

The blonde chubby one stares angrily at her friend. Maria is talking for both of them again. She doesn’t agree. She doesn’t think they need to be so mean.

‘We practise at Skarpholm Hall. You know. The one over there.’

She points to the hill, the direction they just came from. The cat. The dead cat. Fuck it. Fuck animals.

‘Is it a nice gym?’

‘No.’

‘It’s grosser than you.’

They’re both taking the bait. Not even the dark one can stay quiet.

He’s still standing in front of them. He lowers his arms. Runs one hand over his black moustache. Almost petting it.

‘I know a new gym. A brand new gym. It’s close to here. Actually, over there, by the high rise, the white building next to it, do you see it? I know the guy who owns it. I usually go there myself. Maybe you can train there? Your whole club could, as well.’

He points excitedly, and they follow his arm and finger, the blonde chubby one curiously, the dark-haired whore with attitude.

‘There’s no gym over there, fucking cap guy. There isn’t.’

‘Have you been there?’

‘No.’

‘Well then. There is a gym there. A brand new one. And it’s not gross.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Lying?’

‘Lying.’

*

Maria just keeps talking. It’s always her doing all the talking. She shouldn’t talk for other people. She shouldn’t be so mean. It’s because she didn’t get a cap.

She believes him. She got his red and green cap. He knows the guy who owns the gym. She doesn’t like Skarpholm Hall – it smells old, the carpets smell almost like vomit.

‘I believe you. Marwin said there’s a new hall there. It would be nicer to practise there.’

*

Ida really believes there’s a new gym. She believes everything she hears. It’s just because she got an ugly cap.

She knows what new gyms look like. She saw one in Warsaw when she was there with her mum and dad.

‘I know there’s no new gym there, cap guy. I know that you’re lying. If there’s no new gym there when we get there I’m gonna tell my mum and dad.’

*

It’s a beautiful day. June, sunny, warm, a Thursday. Two little whores are walking in front of him down a park path. The dark-haired one is everybody’s whore. The blonde chubby one is his whore alone. Whores whores whores. With their long hair, their thin jackets, their tight trousers. He shouldn’t have touched himself.

The blonde chubby whore turns around and looks at him.

‘We have to be home soon. We have to eat. Mum and Marwin and me. I’m so hungry, I’m always hungry after gymnastics.’

He smiles. They like that. He reaches for the cap sitting on her head, pulling gently on the peak.

‘Come on, this will be super quick. I promise you that. We’re almost there. So you can see if you like it. If you want to train there, it smells new, you know how it smells when something smells like new?’

They go in. He’s been sleeping there for three nights. It was easy to break the door open. A basement filled with storage rooms full of useless crap: boxes of kitchen utensils and books, strollers, IKEA bookshelves, rugs, an occasional floor lamp. Just shit. Except the second furthest from the back, number thirty-three, a black children’s five-speed bike that he sold for two hundred and fifty kronor; a full basement and one shitty kids’ bike. He grabs them by the arms when they walk through the cellar door. He holds tight, one in each hand, they scream just like they always scream, he holds on even tighter. He’s the one who decides. He does the deciding, and whores do the screaming. He’s been sleeping there for three nights, he knows nobody goes down here, not to the cellar, not during the evenings. Two mornings he heard people in the cellar entrance, someone in a storage space, then silence. Whores can scream. Whores should scream.

*

She thinks about Marwin. She thinks about Marwin. She thinks about Marwin. About Marwin’s room. Is he there now? She hopes that he’s there, in his room. At home. With Mum. He’s probably lying in bed reading. He usually does that in the evening. Mostly Donald Duck paperbacks. Still. He read the Lord of the Rings trilogy not too long ago. But he likes Donald Duck comics the most. He’s probably there, she just knows it.

*

Fucking fucking cap guy. Fucking fucking cap guy. Fucking fucking cap guy.

She’s not supposed to talk to his kind. Mum and Dad ask her all the time, and she always says she never talks to them. And she doesn’t. She just gets kind of cocky. Ida doesn’t dare. But she dares. Mum and Dad are going be angry when they find out she spoke to one. She doesn’t want them to be angry.

*

Number thirty-three is the best. That’s where he found the bike. That’s where he’s been sleeping.

They’re not screaming any more. The blonde chubby whore is crying, snot running from the nose, her eyes red. The dark-haired whore stares defiantly at him, challenging him, hating him. He binds their hands to one of the white pipes running along the grey concrete wall. It’s hot, probably a water pipe, it burns the skin of their forearms. They kick at him, and every time they kick, he kicks back. Until they learn. Then they don’t kick any more.

They sit still. Whores should sit still. Whores should wait. He’s the one who decides. He takes off his clothes. T-shirt, jeans, underwear, shoes, socks. In that order. He does it in front of them. If they don’t look at him, he kicks them until they do. Whores should look. He stands in front of them naked. He’s beautiful. He knows he’s beautiful. A fit body. Muscular legs. Firm buttocks. No belly. Beautiful.

‘What do you say?’

The dark-haired whore is crying.

‘Fucking fucking cap guy.’

She cries. It took some time, but now she’s just like all whores.

‘What do you say? Am I beautiful?’

‘Fucking fucking cap guy. I want to go home.’

His penis is erect. He’s the one who decides. He walks over to them, pushes it up against their faces.

‘Beautiful, right?’

He did it twice this morning. He can only do it twice more. He masturbates in front of them. He’s breathing heavily, kicking the blonde chubby one when she looks away for a moment, comes onto their faces, in their hair, smearing it around as they shake their heads.

They’re crying. Whores cry so fucking much.

He takes off their clothes. Their shirts, he has to cut them off, since their hands are fastened to the hot pipe. They’re smaller than he’d imagined. They don’t even have boobs.

He takes off everything except their shoes. Not the shoes. Not yet. The blonde chubby whore has pink shoes. Almost like patent leather. The dark-haired whore has white trainers. The kind tennis players wear. He bends down. In front of the blonde chubby whore. He kisses her pink patent-leather shoes, on top, near the toes. He licks them, from the toes, along the shoe, and to its heel. He takes them off.

Her whore foot is so beautiful. He lifts it up. She’s about to fall further backwards. He licks her ankle, her toes, sucking on each one for a long time. He glances up at her face – she’s still crying. He feels an intense desire.

 

SHE WAKES UP when the morning paper arrives. Every damn time. A thud against the wooden floor. Door after door. She’s tried getting up to stop him, but always too late. She’s seen his back several times. A young guy with a ponytail. If she caught up with him, she’d tell him exactly how people feel on a Sunday morning at five o’clock.

She can’t go back to sleep now. She turns, twists, sweats, tries and tries and tries to fall asleep, but it’s too late. It used to be no problem, but now her thoughts overwhelm her. She’s tense by six in the morning – fuck the paperboy and his ponytail.

The newspaper is as thick as a Bible on Sundays. She lies down with a section, looks at a word here and there. Too much text, she can’t make sense of it, all those interesting stories about interesting people that she should read, but doesn’t. She ends up putting them all in a pile intending to read them later, and never does.

She’s restless. Newspaper, coffee, teeth, breakfast, bed, desk, teeth again. It’s not even half past seven on a Sunday morning in June. The sun whips through the blinds, but she turns her face away, not yet ready for the light. Too much summer, too many people walking hand in hand, too many people sleeping next to each other, too many people laughing, playing, loving – she can’t take it, not yet.

She goes down to the basement. To her storage space. Where it’s dark, lonely, messy.

She knows it will take her at least two hours to clean it. By that time it will at least be nine thirty.

The first thing she sees is that the padlock has been busted. On the storage pens next to hers, too. She should find out who owns them. Thirty-two and thirty-four. Seven years in this building, and she’s never seen either of them. Now they have something in common, they all own a broken padlock. Now they can talk to each other.

Then she notices the bike. Or rather the lack of bike. Jonathan’s expensive, black, five-speed bicycle. Which she was going to sell for at least five hundred kronor. Now she has to call him, at his father’s house. Might as well tell him about it now, so he’s calmed down by the time he comes back.

Afterwards, she has a hard time understanding why she didn’t see. That she could think about who owns storage spaces number thirty-two and thirty-four, about Jonathan’s black mountain bike. It was as if she didn’t want to see, couldn’t. When the police questioned her, she started laughing hysterically when asked what she saw when she opened the storage door. Her first important impression. She laughed long until she started coughing, she laughed while tears ran down her face, she explained that her first and only thought was that Jonathan would be sad that his black mountain bike was gone, that he wouldn’t be able to buy the video games she’d promised him with the money they were going to get for it, at least five hundred.

She had never seen death before, never encountered people who looked at her without breathing.

Because that’s what they did. Looked at her. They lay on the cement floor, their heads cradled on flowerpots, like hard pillows. They were little girls, younger than Jonathan, not more than ten. One fair-haired and one dark-haired. They were bloody: face, chest, genitals, thighs. Dried blood everywhere, except on their feet, the feet were so lovely, almost as if they’d been washed.

She’d never seen them before. Or maybe she had? They lived so close.

Of course. She must have seen them. In the store or maybe in the park? There were always a lot of children in the park.

They lay there on the floor of her storage space for three days. That was what the coroner said. Sixty hours. They had traces of semen in their vaginas, anuses, on their upper bodies, in their hair. The vagina and anus had been subjected to what was called blunt force. A sharp object, probably metal, had been forced inside repeatedly, which caused major internal bleeding.

They might have gone to the same school as Jonathan. There were always so many little girls in the playground. All the little girls looked the same.

They were naked. Their clothes lay in front of them, just inside the storage door. Piece after piece, as if lined up in an exhibition. The jackets folded, trousers rolled up, shirts, underwear, socks, shoes, hairbands, all in a neat row, carefully arranged, two centimetres between each one, two centimetres to the next garment.

They looked at her. But they weren’t breathing.

 

HE’D ALWAYS FELT silly in masks. A grown man in a mask should feel silly. He’d seen other men do the same thing. Winnie the Pooh or Scrooge McDuck or something similar, they’d done it with a kind of gravitas, as if the mask didn’t bother them. I’ll never understand, he thought. I’ll never get used to it. I’ll never be the kind of father I wanted and decided to become.

Fredrik Steffansson fingered the plastic in front of his face. Thin, tight-fitting, colourful. A rubber band on the back, pressing hard against his hair. It was difficult to breathe, smelled of saliva and sweat.

‘Run, Dad! You’re not running! You’re just standing there! The Big Bad Wolf always runs!’

She stood in front of him with her head tilted back, her long blonde hair full of grass and dirt. She was trying to look angry, but an angry child doesn’t smile, and she was smiling as a child does when the Big Bad Wolf is chasing her around a small-town house lap after lap, until he’s completely out of breath, and wants to be somebody without a mask, without a plastic wolf tongue or wolf teeth.

‘Marie, I can’t any more. The Big Bad Wolf has to sit down. The Big Bad Wolf wants to be small and kind.’

She shook her head.

‘One more time, Dad! Just one more time.’

‘You said that last time.’

‘This is the last time.’

‘You said that last time, too.’

‘Absolutely last.’

‘Absolutely?’

‘Absolutely.’

I love her, he thought. She’s my daughter. It took time. I didn’t see it, but now I do. I love her.

Then he glimpsed a shadow. Right behind him. It was moving slowly, stealthily. He’d thought he was in front of him somewhere, over by the trees, but now he was behind him, moving slowly at first, then faster. At the exact same time, the girl with grass and dirt in her hair attacked from the front. They tackled him from opposite directions. He staggered and fell to the ground, and they threw themselves on top of him, lay there. The girl held her hand up in the air and a dark-haired five-year-old boy held up his. They high-fived.

‘He gives up, David!’

‘We won!’

‘The pigs are the best!’

‘The pigs are always the best!’

When two five-year-olds attack the Big Bad Wolf from either direction, he doesn’t have a chance. That’s just how it is. He rolled over with the two children still on top of him. He lay on his back and took the plast. . .